The Men Behind the Masque:
Office-holding in East Anglian boroughs, 1272-1460[contents]

CHAPTER 7

Conflict and Solidarity in Urban Politics

The Petypas Affair (Lynn)

The catalyst for a new round of internal disputes
in Lynn at the turn of the century was the legal battle between
corporation and Bishop at the opening of the reign of Henry IV. A
large element in the community considered this too costly and a
threat to future good relations with the Bishop. Popular discontent
was brought to a head by several factors:

£864 of community money had found its way into the king's
treasury, much of it never to be recovered, in the shape of goodwill
loans;

the increasing burden of petty expenses - many not strictly
necessary, but an expression of civic pride and the dignity of
borough government;

bread shortages, blamed on trade abuses by the merchant class; and

the move by the jurats, in the reign
of Henry IV, to free themselves of the formality of annual election.

Taken together, all these served to provoke a hardened and organised
resistance from the rank-and-file
townsmen.[73] In October 1403 the
capital pledges refused to take their
oath of office, and the mayor
had to be summoned to persuade them. In 1404 the community refused
to consent to the levying of a local tax, and disputes between
"les grauntz Gentz" and the "poor commons" resulted in the
imprisonment of 7 of the latter (one a
freeman and most of the
others identifiable as inferiores), who then petitioned the
king for an enquiry into misgovernment. When a commission was
appointed in 1406, however, it was to investigate the insurrections
that had been erupting over the previous two
years.[74] The power of the
community is suggested in a letter
of about this time in which the mayor, instructing John Crosse to pursue
certain business for the town only if he expected to be successful,
complained that "The comones wil make no cost but if it myght
availe."[75]

Under the leadership of Bartholomew Petypas,
the popular party won control of the administration in August 1411
by having its nominee, Roger Galyon, elected mayor. It is highly
probable that this was managed by, as the potentiores later
charged, Petypas and his multitude of supporters (predominantly
non-freemen) taking over the electoral proceedings and abandoning
the established method of election. Already in the first half of
that year Petypas and his followers - especially William Halleyate,
John Bilney, John Tilney, William Brycham, Philip Franke, and
William Baret - had been causing
trouble.[76] The king heard the
charges concerning the election, but let off Petypas with a
warning. Encouraged, the reform administration began negotiating
for a new charter, probably to embody desired constitutional
changes - already Tilney had been sent to Oxford to learn of the
method of mayoral election used there. In addition, it obtained
royal approval of the traditional practice that the jurats should
be elected annually.[77] By December
1411 there had been set up a special committee of 18 persons, comprising
7 jurats (one of them Brycham), 5 non-jurat freemen (including
Petypas, Bilney, Baret, and Franke), and 6 inferiores
(including Halleyate and Tilney). Partly deriving its authority
from the 1309 composition, this committee was to re-audit the
chamberlains' accounts of the last
twelve years and draw up a settlement between parties. But in April 1412
five of the jurats, realising they could not control the committee,
dissociated themselves, leaving the "greater part of the 18", on the
principle of majority rule, to draw up the terms of the settlement. These
terms were that:

various past expenditures of the potentiores'
administration,[78] particularly
those of 1401/2 on the suit against the Bishop, were disallowed;

also disallowed were debts claimed from the community by five
ex-mayors, from their terms of office;

a committee of three persons per class was to handle community
rents; and

the protection accorded to the inferiores by the 1309
composition was re-confirmed.[79]

The potentiores, although at first
promising to accept the award, spoke out against it in assembly
in July, unsuccessfully sought the Bishop's help in August, and
then took their case before the king. In preparation for the
coming battle, the reform administration made 112 of the inferiores
freemen two days before the elections of 1412. This ensured the
re-election of Galyon by a more constitutional method than had
been used in 1411, and with a minimum of resistance from the
supporters of the potentiores (most of whom boycotted the
election). Keeping closely in touch with Bishop Tottington, who
evidently approved of the reformers' actions, Petypas and co. defended
their case before the Chancellor, who referred the disputants back
to the Bishop. This inevitably resulted in the potentiores
complainants being obliged to agree to accept the award of the
"greater part of the 18". Other potentiores followed suit,
and further resistance was cowed by an assault on the
Merchant Gild members at a June 1413
meeting. In secret, however, the original complainants began plotting
against the reform administration.[80]

Their hopes were aroused by the accession
of a new Bishop of Norwich in September 1413. By now Petypas himself
had been elected to succeed Galyon as mayor, and he sent Bilney,
Halleyate, and Tilney to London to determine the wishes of the
Bishop. The potentiores used their influence to have
Tilney arrested. Violence in Lynn was on the increase, some of
it organised assaults on the potentiores, some seemingly
mob action perhaps aimed at Fleming residents. Rumours circulated
that the potentiores would interfere with the elections of
August 1414. Petypas therefore held that election early, but this
did not deter the potentiores from proceeding, in the presence
of the county sheriff, with their own election - although the
reformers did their best to disrupt this. Now the king intervened
and both parties sent representatives before him. The result of
his arbitration was a constitutional compromise known as the
"New Ordinances". This settlement aimed at adopting features of
London's constitution and electoral methods; the object was to
guarantee the rights of all freemen to participate, to divide
electoral power between the two estates of mediocres and
potentiores, and to acknowledge the jurats as a
life-membership body. This was put
into effect immediately and fresh elections were held. A compromise
candidate was elected mayor: John Lakinghithe, one of the oldest and most
venerable townsmen; a jurat, but one who had acquiesced in the reform
administration. It gradually became apparent, however, that
Lakinghithe was only a front for a return to power of the
potentiores. In January 1415 Petypas led his supporters
in an armed attack on the potentiores in the town hall, and
maintained the intimidation sufficiently to inhibit the holding of
further corporation sessions for a while; although by March the
jurats had recovered to the point where they were able to annull
all the franchise entrances of inferiores between 1412-14,
and go on to obtain an investigation which convicted Petypas and
his lieutenants of various acts of violence, forcing them to go
into temporary exile at Titchfield Abbey. A new committee was chosen
to settle party differences, but was heavily overweighted with
potentiores. Again appeal was made to the king, and it was
decided that the Bishop and the Earl of Dorset should
arbitrate.[81]

Meanwhile, it was time to elect a new mayor.
The reformers managed to engineer the election of John Bilney; but
the jurats, taking advantage of the episcopal interregnum consequent
to the death of Bishop Courtenay, obtained from the king a writ
ordering Robert Brunham (who, as gild
alderman, had replaced John
Lakinghithe when he died in office) to remain in the mayoralty. A
furious populace forced Brunham to acquiesce in the swearing-in
of mayor-elect Bilney, but Bilney was now himself unwilling to go
against the king's wishes. The impasse was settled by further
royal intervention, appointing as mayor Thomas Hunte (October 1415),
"one zealous for peace and no disturber", whom the king hoped would
be suitable to both parties.[82] In
fact, Hunte subsequently requested the Bishop-elect to exile Petypas
and his supporters from the town until the potentiores had
argued their case against the reformers. He may have had some
justification, in that a number of inferiores were still
acting together, trying to disrupt Hunte's administration. The jurats,
having already sent an agent to Norwich "to learn in what fashion they
are governed in those parts",[83]
persuaded the king to approve the revocation of the New Ordinances
in June 1416. Petypas and Halleyate, seeing which way the wind was
blowing, had already bought pardons for all treasons, rebellions, felonies,
conspiracies, etc., in April.[84]

Still Petypas hoped to regain lost ground.
In July 1416 he was regathering around him his old supporters, some
of whom were still actively resisting Hunte's government; and he
was seeking a customs post at Lynn, as a first foothold in a return
to power. On August 12 he pleaded his case before the Bishop's
Council, but could not prevent the election of John Wesenham as
mayor by the pre-reform method. Nonetheless, the Bishop intervened
and in 1418 a new settlement was drawn up. There is some suggestion
that this restored the New Ordinances, with slight amendments favourable
to the potentiores, but the overall effect was much as the Norwich
composition of 1415 (with which the jurats were doubtless now familiar):
recognising the jurats as a life-membership body, therefore independent
of direct popular control; and counter-balancing this with the creation
of a Common Council, but leaving the jurats with some measure of
control over the membership of this lower
council.[85] Petypas was still
not happy, although his appeals to the Bishop in 1419 were largely
a defence against the retributive measures brought by his old
enemies. A few of his followers made an ineffective attempt to
object to electoral procedure in that same year, but these were
the die-hards, and Petypas' support had so dwindled that he gave
up the fight, and was rewarded with a place in jurat ranks
(1420).[86]

Previous interpretations of this affair
have suffered from two things: lack of sufficient
information[87] and a failure
(due to want of space and time) to make a detailed examination of
the membership of the contesting factions. We shall now try to
redress the second, to some extent. Jeaffreson believed that the
political crisis resolved essentially into conflict between the
Merchant Gild and non-gildsmen. Harrod blamed the Bishop for
exploiting hostilities between groups of townsmen, so as to
consolidate his own lordship over the borough. Richards saw
only an inexplicable personal rivalry between Petypas and John
Wentworth, complicated by the ideas for political reform in
Wycliffism. Hillen concurred with the former notion and, consistent
at least with his interpretation of Lynn's political history
generally, entirely blamed "the aggressive plutocrats and their
turbulent partisans" for the disturbance of peaceful government.
Green was largely responsible for Hillen adopting this interpretation,
and she also maintained that, whilst the Common Council of Norwich
was the product of a popular victory, that of Lynn was quite the
opposite. Morey felt that this interpretation of a democracy vs.
oligarchy battle was an over-simplification and that, although the
economic distress of the urban lower classes (partly due to the corrupt
and monopolistic practices of the potentiores) was a causal
factor, hostility towards the Bishop complicated matters, so that the
memberships of the opposing factions do not fit neatly into the
tripartite class divisions.[88] It is
here believed that some clarification can result from an investigation
of the personnel involved in the Lynn affair, just as similar investigation
throws light on the Ipswich crisis of 1320/1.

The names of a large number of the
participants are known from the charter recording the agreement
of the three classes (December 1411) to submit to the impending
award of "the 18"[89]: 23
potentiores, 83 mediocres, and 66 inferiores
were signatories to this agreement. Of these inferiores,
75% subsequently entered the franchise between 1412 and 1414,
and 101 other inferiores were also made freemen in the
same period.[90] Most of the 112
freemen created in August 1412 paid no fine, for it was claimed
that they were entering as apprentices; the few fines that were
paid ranged from 3s.4d to 20s. (6s.8d being the most common) - much
lower than the customary 40s.[91]
Previously, artisans' apprentices had not been permitted the free
entrance granted to merchants' apprentices, and perhaps this was
one of the grievances of the lower classes - as indeed it was in
1424/5, when artisans' apprentices were granted equal rights to
those of merchants. In support of this we may note that in
1415 the corporation was advised, with regard to the inferiores
entrants, that it was ancient custom for apprentices to pay 40s.
entrance fine, although practice shows this to have been far from
true. The 1424/5 ordinance shows that the reform party had
achieved something, if only in reviving democratic consciousness
in the community: Robert Brod, an inferior entrant of 1412,
argued on behalf of the artisan apprentices "quod est una
libertas in villa, unum iuramentum et unum finem
(sic)."[92]

The signatories of 1411 evidently represent
only a minority, if a large one, of the total population. Not
included in their number are 39 of the men who entered the
franchise between 1399 and 1410 and whom we might reasonably
expect to be alive c.1412. Nor are 23 of the burgess entrants
of 1414/5 listed earlier among the inferiores, although
the prominence of merchants among these entrants suggests that
some at least were supporters of the potentiores brought in to
redress the imbalance in the electorate.[93]
A few important names, such as Roger Galyon and Robert Botkesham
(possibly on his death-bed), are also not among
the signatories. However, since it was obviously to the
advantage of peace in the town to have as many as possible of
the active participants in the dispute agree to the settlement,
the names that we possess are likely to be a good indicator of
the character of the hostilities. Not that we should assume that
the three classes, as separately listed in 1411, necessarily
represent the lines of division of opinion, and that this was a
demarcation between between Merchant Gild and craft gilds. True,
the potentiores were all merchants, with the apparent
exception of one of unknown occupation,[94]
yet the majority of the mediocres of known occupation also
were merchants, whilst even among the inferiores were a
handful of merchants, although most of this last group - mercers
and spicers - may have been little more than
shopkeepers.[95]

The potentiores were in fact 23 of
the jurats; this suggests a political rather than an economic
struggle. Even though the missing 24th jurat, Roger Galyon, was
the mayor of the reform administration, and jurats William Brycham
and Richard Thorpe were among the supporters of
Petypas,[96] whilst a few other
jurats were not overly hostile to the reform administration, the
majority more or less stood together in passive
resistance.[97] The potentiores
did have a little support from other burgesses, but it is
difficult to establish identities, or what proportion of the
mediocres gave this support. Of the mediocres, 2 were
from jurat families, but 26 either held office under the
reform administration or were associated with the reformers
in other ways. The evidence suggests that it was not mere
propaganda when Petypas claimed to have the support of the majority
of the burgesses.[98] It may be
that the inferiores, being the most aggrieved and the
most removed from the interests of the jurats, supported the
reformers almost to a man, particularly given the pro-episcopal
stance of both groups; certainly, of the 38 men ordered arrested
for opposing mayor Hunte in 1415, 26 were former
inferiores.[99]

In fact, the source of active opposition
to the reform party came principally from the elite clique of
ex-mayors within jurat ranks - precisely the group blamed by the
reformers for the financial maladministration of the previous
decade or so. These men stood to lose a good deal of money,
should the reformers triumph. Since financial matters sit at the
hub of the grievances of, and the resistance to, the reformers, we
must not entirely ignore occupational divisions. The potentiores
do represent, not merely merchants, but the interests of the
large-scale, international commerçants, whilst the
inferiores are clearly overwhelmingly artisan in
composition.[100] It is again
a question of scale - that is, the degree of combination of
political power and wealth - rather than strict occupational
divisions on an institutional (i.e. gild) basis. Yet the
resentment against the growth of political privilege for the
wealthier segment of the community would have lacked effective
expression were it not for the small group spearheading reform.
Their identities are as much a clue to the nature of the affair
as are the aggregate identities of the three classes.

Bartholomew Petypas, the driving force
behind the reform party, appears to have been of the same
social and economic status as the potentiores, although the
only local office he is known to have held before the democratic
'coup' is that of scabin of the
Merchant Gild, a role that may have given him privileged access to
knowledge of the behind-the-scenes workings of borough finances. He
entered the franchise in 1392 as merchant-apprentice of jurat John de
Botkesham, kinsman of the Robert de Botkesham who was one target
of the reformers' complaints. In 1405 Petypas was exporting
cloth, and importing iron, timber, stone, and oil. Like Ipswich's
John de Halteby, he seems to have preferred to exercise power
from behind the throne, and probably only took the mayoralty in
1413 for want of any other strong helmsman at a time when the
reformers' hold on government was increasingly precarious. When,
after the failure of his efforts to hold together his supporters
as funds dwindled, royal intervention broke his grip on Lynn's
government, and the institution of the Common Council undermined
his position, he bowed to the inevitable re-establishment of
potentiores dominance. He was then allowed to take his
proper place in their ranks and to serve as M.P. several
times before his death c.1432, causing no further trouble for
his former opponents.[101]

Petypas' right-hand man was William Halleyate, also
a merchant, but not apparently on the scale of the potentiores.
Halleyate was a customs collector in Lynn from 1408. He was one of
the bailiffs from c.1393 to
c.1401 and, as such, possibly an agent of the Bishop, although
it is more likely that he was one of the king's bailiffs; with
regard to his possible ties to the Bishop, we may note that the
inquisitions of 1415 described him as "of Gaywood", the Bishop's
manor, and he was an inferior before August 1412. He twice
acted as M.P. on behalf of the reform administration, and
frequently travelled on its errands to the Bishop and to London,
where he may have owned a residence. After the disintegration
of the reform party, he was given no office in Lynn and in fact
rarely appears in the records, although still alive in
1420.[102]

John Tilney junior too may be suspected
of being an agent of outside interests. An inferior in 1411,
he was identified in 1414 as dom. John Tilney, clerk of the Bishop
of Norwich, and was also a servant of the admiral Duke of
Exeter, representing his (property) interests in Lynn and acting
as his deputy in the Court of Admiralty. Tilney was principally
a lawyer, although variously described as magister, clerk,
bachelor-of-law, esquire, gentleman, and husbandman. As such,
he served the reform party as legal advisor, scribe of documents
too important to be entrusted to the town clerk (who appears sympathetic
to the potentiores - or, at least, of the established order), and
representative of the party's interests in parliament at four sittings.
He had some mercantile interests, his father probably being the
wool-merchant who entered the franchise as a draper in 1377, whilst John
junior's own son was apprenticed to tailor/merchant Adam White at about
the time that White was chamberlain for the reform administration. Thanks
probably to his high-level contacts, the failure of the reformers
was no serious blow to his career, and he subsequently became
involved in the royal administrative network, notably as customs
officer at Lynn and Yarmouth 1425-35.[103]

John de Bilney, the last of Petypas'
lieutenants, was another merchant, dealing in cloth and fish, and
just possibly another servant of Exeter. Bilney had become a
freeman, and thereby a mediocre, in 1403, a move not inhibited
by the fact that he was a resident of South Lynn. His political
fortunes rose and fell with the reform party: selected to represent
it in parliament c.24 October 1411, he was replaced a few days
later; he was elected one of the community prolocutors in 1413, but
the post did not outlast the reform administration; he was returned
to the parliament of 1414, but suffered a further disappointment
when the king quashed his election as mayor in 1415; nor did his
stint as jurat outlive the reform administration. He is not heard
of after 1415, although it may have been a son, Geoffrey, who was
councillor 1418-20 and spokesman for the reform die-hards in
1419.[104]

Finally, mention should be made of Roger
Galyon, although more a figurehead than the active participants
that the above four were. Cloth-merchant, several times royal
commissioner, and customs officer in Lynn 1395-1406, he may have
been selected as the reform party's first mayor simply because
he was a jurat, and one who either supported, or at least did
not oppose, their aims. His motives in this are made suspect by
certain aspects of his behaviour. That he courted power is hinted
at by his (unsuccessful) competition with John Brandon to secure
a customs posts at Lynn in the 1390s, and by his arrest of the
horses of one Hans Leche without due legal process or the authority
of the mayor (1404). Yet he was unreliable, twice failing to act
on the king's commission, and twice charged with embezzling
customs money. He was also convicted of
forestalling wool in
1400. One of the most junior members of the jurats when he threw
in his hand with the reformers, it may be that he therefore felt
no great loyalty to the potentiores, although it would be
unjust to discount the alternate possibility of genuine sympathy
with the reformers' grievances. We may note, however, that when
he was summoned, as mayor, to answer before Chancery for the
troubles in Lynn, the reformers were unwilling to let him go as
their spokesman, preferring to send others. He also seems to
have played little role in affairs once his mayoralty had ended,
and remained a jurat after the potentiores' restoration,
until his death in 1418.[105]

The Lynn conflict thus contrasts with that
at Ipswich in 1320/1, in that the ringleaders of reform in Lynn
do not seem to have sought to displace the objectionable town
rulers in order to clear the way for their own exercise of power;
although their failure, contrasted with the success of Halteby,
Preston, and Costyn, could disguise such motives. Yet, although
the reform movement may be said to have failed in terms of the
careers of Petypas and co., arguably it had more effect on the
total personnel of government than the affair at Ipswich. This
we may see from study of the political careers of the groups
involved in the Lynn disputes. Of the 23 potentiores: four
died during the course of the affair, from natural causes as far
as may be determined, although the rough treatment that the
elderly mayor Lakinghithe received under the feet of the
insurgents in January 1415 may have hastened his death a
few months later; three others held no further office after
the local re-adeption.[106] This
replacement rate conforms to the normal rate we have already
calculated;[107] therefore, we cannot
infer any political disgracings, like those of Stace and le
Rente at Ipswich. Fifteen of the potentiores remained
jurats, several proceeding to the mayoralty; whilst a
sixteenth (Ralph Bedingham), who had been deposed in 1413, was
restored to office. Of the 86 mediocres, 15 had held office
prior to the affair (most as chamberlains); 12 of these 15
continued to be active in borough government, and 39 others
also held office. This is partly explicable by the fact that
most of the subsequent office-holders were from the younger
mediocres, who entered the franchise in the early 1400s.
Yet several were older, and William Walden, a chamberlain of the
reform administration, had been a freeman since
1388.[108] The evidence is more
striking when we turn to the 167 inferiores. Bearing in
mind that the important offices were restricted to freemen, and
that many of the inferiores later entered the
franchise,[109] we may note that
only 2 of them held office prior to 1412 (one being Halleyate),
whereas 32 held office during the reigns of Henry V and Henry VI.
The increased political involvement of mediocres and
ex-inferiores owed much to the creation of the Common
Council, itself a by-product of the reform
movement,[110] for it employed
55 of them at one time or other. Yet 19 mediocres and 2
ex-inferiores also became jurats, and 4 mediocres
and 1 ex-inferior rose to the mayoralty. This
strengthens the impression that men of capability and ambition
could rise from the lower to the upper ranks of urban society,
although circumstances dictated that this was not (nor should
we expect it to be) a common occurrence. More importantly, it
seems that, in terms of the number of burgesses participating
in Lynn's administration from c.1418 onwards, the borough government
cannot easily be categorised as an
oligarchy.

The effects of the reform movement were
not great, but neither were they negligible, in providing for
a new avenue of political promotion and in giving new expression
to the traditional and democratic sentiments of community
authority, seemingly quiescent for a century. Yet if those
sentiments seem to have been dormant it is partly the fault of
comparison with the revitalisation of politics in Lynn in the
time of Henry VI. Critics may suggest that the Common Council
was an impotent organ of government, its membership under the
censorial control of the ruling elite, and therefore not truly
representative but designed as a sop to the mediocres to
break their alliance with the inferiores. Yet in fact
it seems quite as powerful as the more nebulous 'institution'
of the community had been previously - a limited power,
admittedly - although its sphere of influence was primarily
restricted to financial affairs.[111]
The censorship powers of the mayoralty, regarding membership of
the Council, do not seem to have been used, let alone abused.
The Council was elected by non-freemen as well as freemen, and
was thus more representational than any previous
institution;[112] and it served
to involve in some measure of decision-making a larger proportion
of the population than would otherwise have been inclined to
participate. Nor was the existence of the lower council used
as an excuse to exclude others of the community from assemblies,
for we occasionally find large attendances, as on 21 March 1457,
when there was only one, but an important, piece of business:
the reading out of the borough
constitution.[113] We need not
pretend that the community had emerged from the affair of the
early fifteenth century unscathed; its position was compromised
in that authority was now divided between two separate political
estates. But this was essentially an adjustment of the political
theory to a pre-existent political reality, and the only
alternative to this solution was continued and irreconcilable
hostilities, punctuated only by interludes of exhaustion or
royal custodianship.